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posted by FatPhil on Wednesday July 25 2018, @05:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the choose-life dept.

This Bold Plan to Fight Opioid Overdoses Could Save Lives--But Some Conservatives Think It's "Immoral"

With Ohio beset by a massive public health around opioid use and overdoses--more than 4,000 Ohioans died of opioid overdoses in 2016--the Cleveland Plain Dealer sent travel editor Susan Glaser to Amsterdam in search of innovative approaches to the problem. While there, she rediscovered Holland's long-standing, radical, and highly effective response to heroin addiction and properly asked whether it might be applied to good effect here.

The difference in drug-related death rates between the two countries is staggering. In the U.S., the drug overdose death rate is 245 per million, nearly twice the rate of its nearest competitor, Sweden, which came in second with 124 per million. But in Holland, the number is a vanishingly small 11 per million. In other words, Americans are more than 20 times more likely to die of drug overdoses than the Dutch.

For Plain Dealer readers, the figures that really hit home are the number of state overdose deaths compared to Holland. Ohio, with just under 12 million people, saw 4,050 drug overdose deaths in 2016; the Netherlands, with 17 million people, saw only 235.

What's the difference? The Dutch government provides free heroin to several score [where a score=20] hardcore heroin addicts and has been doing so for the past 20 years. Public health experts there say that in addition to lowering crime rates and improving the quality of life for users, the program is one reason overdose death rates there are so low. And the model could be applied here, said Amsterdam heroin clinic operator Ellen van den Hoogen.

[...]"It's not a program that is meant to help you stop," acknowledged van den Hoogen. "It keeps you addicted."

That's not a sentiment sits well with American moralizers, such as George W. Bush's drug czar, John Walters, whom Glaser consulted for the story. He suggested that providing addicts with drugs was immoral and not "real treatment," but he also resorted to lies about what the Dutch are doing.

He claimed the Dutch are "keeping people addicted for the purpose of controlling them" and that the Dutch have created "a colony of state-supported, locked-up addicts."

Your humble Ed (who rechopped the quoting, so head off to the full article(s) to see the full story) adds: of course, this is quite a contentious issue, digging deep into moralistic debate, and where clearly there's little agreed-upon objective truth and plenty of opinions. However, we are a community dotted widely round the globe, and so I'm sure there are plenty of stories of what has or has not worked in different locales.

Previous: Tens or Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Needed to Combat Opioid Crisis?
Portugal Cut Drug Addiction Rates in Half by Rejecting Criminalization


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday July 25 2018, @07:52PM (2 children)

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Wednesday July 25 2018, @07:52PM (#712619) Journal

    That's what you have now with unlawfully obtained drugs: The government out of the process of ensuring heroin that is used is pure and meets a certain quality standard. That's mainly how overdoses happen. User is used to a certain purity of product, and then gets hit with a product that is an order of magnitude more pure than the addict is used to. Too much is used of the pure and you get an overdose. (Or it is laced with Fentanyl and the user didn't know it.)

    So by the government being out of it you are paying a whole lot more for it.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @06:54AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @06:54AM (#712944)

    question: wouldn't legal heroin be much cheaper than illegal heroin as well? I'm under the impression that the high price is mostly associated to the expensive illegal distribution system, but pharmacists could make it relatively cheaply.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:42PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:42PM (#713211)

      The solution is obviously to make sure a significant amount of the imported heroin is cut with a high dosage of Fentanyl.
      Kills tens of thousands of addicts, scares the ones who still have enough willpower. Usage drops. Problem solved !

      What? That's the current plan, and it ain't working ? Fucking humans...